Ethics of Authenticity [Paperback]

Everywhere we hear talk of decline, of a world that was better once, maybe fifty years ago, maybe centuries ago, but certainly before modernity drew us along its dubious path. While some lament the slide of Western culture into relativism and nihilism and others celebrate the trend as a liberating sort of progress, Charles Taylor calls on us to face the moral and political crises of our time, and to make the most of modernitys challenges.

The great merit of Taylors brief, non-technical, powerful book&is the vigor with which he restates the point which Hegel (and later Dewey) urged against Rousseau and Kant: that we are only individuals in so far as we are social& Being authentic, being faithful to ourselves, is being faithful to something which was produced in collaboration with a lot of other people& The core of Taylors argument is a vigorous and entirely successful criticism of two intertwined bad ideas: that you are wonderful just because you are you, and that respect for difference requires you to respect every human being, and every human cultureno matter how vicious or stupid.
Richard Rorty,London Review of Books

The great merit of Taylors brief, non-technical, powerful book&is the vigour with which he restates the point which Hegel (and later Dewey) urged against Rousseau and Kant: that we are only individuals in so far as we are social& Being authentic, being faithful to ourselves, is being faithful to something which was produced in collaboration with a lot of other people& The core of Taylors argument is a vigorous and entirely successful criticism of two intertwined bad ideas: that you are wonderful just because you are you, and that respect for difference requires you to respect every human being, and every human cultureno matter how vicious or stupid.Charles Taylor is a philosopher of broad reach and many talents, but his most striking talent is a gift for interpreting different traditions, cultures and philosophies tl#K